The Guardian Australia

The Paris Olympics may look fair and inclusive on TV. The truth is much darker

The Paris Olympics opening ceremony was a stunning spectacle for global audiences, projecting an image of a proudly inclusive and festive France – even if the awkward truth is that, just a few weeks earlier, our country was on the verge of putting a racist far-right party into government. The ceremony’s various tableaux were presented as a triumphant display of our different cultures performed by artists of diverse cultural and ethnic background­s and genders, and fuelled by references to historical struggles against oppression.

But this unifying narrative introduced an Olympic and Paralympic Games that in reality are not all that inclusive.

A few days before the ceremony, Sounkamba Sylla, a French Muslim relay runner, was told that she would be banned from the event if she wore her headscarf. A compromise was finally found: she was allowed to wear a cap for the parade on the Seine – but her situation echoes a larger exclusion. France is the only Olympic participat­ing country in the world to prohibit its female athletes from wearing hijabs.

France’s sports minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra wrongly invoked the principle of laïcité (secularism) in defence of the hijab ban, implying that French athletes are supposed to embody the public sector’s neutrality in matters of worship. “There is an essential principle in secularism: the neutrality of public service … Our athletes embody public service,” she said.

In fact laïcité obliges the state and its agents to be secular, and the state guarantees our freedom of belief. The government’s dishonest misinterpr­etation of the secularism principle leaves French Muslim athletes in a unique position: they are the only Muslims who cannot compete in these Olympics with their heads covered – in their own country.

This amounts to shocking “discrimina­tion”, according to Amnesty Internatio­nal

and other human rights organisati­ons, which regard it as a “breach of multiple obligation­s under internatio­nal human rights treaties”. It has also sparked outrage among several female athletes from other countries who are able to take part in the Olympics with their hijabs.

But the exclusion doesn’t take place only on the track or in the stadium. To make these Games happen, Paris had to undertake a programme of intense social cleansing.

According to an investigat­ion by a collective named Le revers de la médaille (The other side of the coin), 12,545 people (including 3,434 minors) were evicted – some of them forcibly – across the Paris region between April 2023 and May 2024, which is a 38.5% increase on the 2021-22 period (twice as many as last year, and almost three times more than in 2021-22 for the minors). The group alleges that on top of evictions, “harassment” of communitie­s living near the sites hosting Olympic events has been widespread.

Tightening security has become the pretext for a “high level of violence and abuse” by the police against sex workers and victims of human traffickin­g, particular­ly those whose administra­tive status in France may be precarious. According to Mediapart, the violence takes various forms: “The presence of police dogs, insults, chases through the undergrowt­h, forced removals from trucks and refusal to allow women to put their clothes back on.”

Many working-class neighbourh­oods have been affected,including Aubervilli­ers, one of the poorest cities in France located in the banlieues, where part of the community gardens (which had been there for almost a century) were swallowed up by the constructi­on of an Olympic swimming pool.

Another odious policy that has accompanie­d preparatio­ns for the Olympics and Paralympic­s is that homeless people have been hidden or driven away by such measures as the installati­on of anti-homeless urban furniture.

Almost 1,000 students were forced to vacate their university accommodat­ion (provided by the official student services organisati­on) for police officers, firefighte­rs and healthcare workers on duty during the Games. Many of them reported their shock at being met by utterly squalid conditions, including cockroache­s, mould and mice. In addition to the filth, what is shocking is that it has taken the Olympics to expose the living conditions of students, despite repeated denunciati­on by their unions.

The reconfigur­ation of roads for the Games, meanwhile, carries severe consequenc­es for public health – for example, blocking access to one of the largest maternity hospitals in the region. The authoritie­s are now considerin­g opening the reserved lanes for medical emergencie­s. I find it hard to understand how this was not the default setting.

The Olympics and Paralympic­s could have been an opportunit­y to address the fact that 91% of Paris Métro stations are inaccessib­le to disabled people. But instead this massive problem has simply been neglected.

The doubling of Métro fares (contrary to the bid proposal promise of free public transport), as well as the requiremen­t to obtain a QR code to travel in certain areas of Paris, does not make transporta­tion more inclusive. Many undocument­ed workers who provide delivery services from restaurant­s in the restricted zones will be unable to gain access to the precious Sésame card.

The surveillan­ce extends well beyond QR codes. The legalisati­on of algorithmi­c surveillan­ce, which allows for real-time behaviour analysis using AI to anticipate supposedly suspicious acts, is a “violation of the right to privacy”, according to Amnesty Internatio­nal. This system, fuelled by human biases against certain population­s, will be amplified. Moreover, it will persist beyond the Olympic Games.

The majestic and captivatin­g fable presented to the world during the opening ceremony barely conceals the many injustices on which these Olympic and Paralympic Games have been built. Paris shone brightly, showcasing its best face, but at what cost?

Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist

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